The Pusyon Bisaya phenomenon
I wrote this column last Saturday, May 11, two days before the May 13 midterm elections so the election results are not used as inputs. The election outcomes may validate or invalidate some of the conclusions but the study will be useful in analyzing and appreciating human behavior in organizations. Aside from teaching Finance in UP, I was also lecturing about organizations and human behavior in organizations in other fora, and I am always interested in the evolution of human behavior over time amidst changing socio-political environment and technological advances.
Unexpected election outcomes are uncommon and are studied for its reasons especially by the candidates. The post-mortem analysis is important but the long view after many years are even more interesting. The case of the totally unexpected win of the Pusyon Bisaya in the 1978 Interim Batasang Pambansa election under a martial law regime is a classic. All the political families and alliances in Region 7 were in one party, allied with Marcos, to take all the 13 seats for the region. For the first time, the Osmeña, Durano, Cuenco, Gullas, and other clans were in the same party and everybody expected them to win against a group of unknown and slightly-known opposition candidates, the likes of Davide, Piernes, Bacalso, Corominas, and other forgettable names. The government resources and that of the ruling party, the Kilusang Bagong Lipunan (KBL) was behind the big names, so nobody gave the opposition the slightest chance. Lo and behold after the votes were counted, the Pusyon Bisaya candidates got 9,495,416 votes in Region 7, winning all the 13 seats for the region in the Batasang Pambansa. There were initiatives to prevent the proclamation of the winners by the government, but these were unsuccessful due to international pressure, but this is another story.
There are many factors for this turn of events and these reasons piled up on or augmented each other. Resentment against martial law was growing, the economy was declining, the dominance of the same politicians was glaring, and the overall lack of freedom and equality unnerving. The Press was well controlled by the martial law government and so was information dissemination, but somehow there was awareness of the situation. Sympathy for the underdog and the unknowns was in the offing and the overconfidence of the KBL candidates compounded their eminent defeat. On hindsight, this was actually one of the beginnings of the People Power Revolution that happened in 1986 that toppled the Marcos regime. That it took another seven years to happen may have something to do with the information technology available then and the patience of the Filipino people.
Some of the lessons and conclusions are that people have tipping points that politicians should not breach, that elections are release valves and equalizers, that the state of the economy is important, that an informed citizenry is formidable and the advent information communication and transmission technologies moves them faster, and that Filipinos are for democracy and enjoy the democratic space.
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The drawing that the Malacañang press secretary has been showing is not really a “matrix” but a “scatter diagram”. A matrix is a structure where the relationship of the elements is set up in a rectangular grid to show linkages. A scatter diagram is a graph in which variables are plotted in an X and Y axis to determine a pattern in the resulting points that may lead to a possible correlation. Malacañang should get rid of the scatterbrain who made the drawing. “The best advisers for leaders are those that protect the leaders from themselves.”
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